Goodbye Sunrise, Hello Calendars
As we all know. Sunrise Calendar has announced a date to close it’s virtual doors.
On August 23rd, one of the world’s most popular calendar applications will be closing down. (full blog post)
Sunrise offered so much, it was the hub to all your calendar events and activities no matter what platform you were from, ideal for everyone.
Here are 4 alternatives to the Sunrise calendar to get you back on track:
1. Calendars 5 by Readdle (iOS)
Readdle’s Calendars 5 is a great tool, very under-rated for it’s ability to. It’s the closest thing I’ve found to feeling like Sunrise Calendar, add your calendars via the App and get started.
I’m impressed by the natural language input as well as the ability to modify the display views — the month view was stressing me out, so I switched over to the day view which felt very Sunrise.
There is still some rough design flaws but I’m sure they’ll iron these out. A few weeks ago it sat at the top of the App Store for free Apps. I’m sure there is more to come after seeing this tweet from their PR team.
Get Calendars 5 here.
2. Outlook Calendar (iOS, Android)
If you aren't romantic about what calendar app you are using, and you don’t feel bitter about the guys at Outlook stealing Sunrise’s technology and assets, this might be a great solution for you.
Outlook does require creating an email account, but if you already have a Microsoft account it’s ideal, you can begin attaching your Gmail, Yahoo and more. This will bring in events from these calendars as well as emails.
Essentially you are bringing everything into Microsoft’s micro-system here. It’ll look like Sunrise when using it but won’t be ideal for solely calendar management as you’ll be getting emails in via the App too.
Download Outlook here.
3. Fantastical 2 (iOS, Mac)
Personally I recommend this for iOS and Mac lovers, for me it doesn’t feel right on iOS. The display is very limiting so if you are a fan of seeing a list of your events, this is ideal for you.
Fantastical 2 however does serve as a strong Sunrise replacement, easy-to-use and simple to set-up makes it a no-brainer.
It does come with a £3.99 price tag but if you like to blend Reminders with events, like simple design and don’t mind list view style calendars this is a smashing solution.
Download Fantastical 2 here.
4. Google Calendar (iOS, Android)
Google Calendar will take a little work to set-up, but offers something you can do within the first 20 minutes. Google Calendars web browser page looks horrible (something they still haven’t updated since 2014’s mention of material design), but will help you add all your calendars.
They have a strong iOS and Android application with some additional beneficial features like “Goals” for managing your weekly achievements and habits, they have a really beautiful UX for adding events and a great all-round feel to the app.
I used Google Calendars iOS for two weeks and was impressed, but it lacked the speed for Calendars 5 that I’m using now.
Access Google Calendar here.
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I hope these solutions are helping you with your move to another calendar application, please do let me know in the comments if there is one that you recommend, maybe a few more cross-platform solutions.
Other notable mentions:
- Cal by Any.DO — great for Android users, but limiting UX.
- iOS Calendar — perfect for Mac users.
Francesco D’Alessio is a productivity app reviewer, fan and user! He creates videos on his YouTube channel, blogs, articles for Lifehack.org, Despreneur and much more to help educate the world about productivity tools and resources. He’s been featured on CNET, Microsoft, Todoist’s Blog and more for his work.
Twitter: @FrancescoD_Ales
